We had such a fun week at Eagle Camp this year. We learned a lot about herbivores, omnivores, carnivores and the food chain. We hope to do it again next year!

We did one final swim at our favorite beach and had fun tackling our helper, Nick.

The long hike around the rim of the kettle required a bit of rest and observation of the beautiful prairie.

In the afternoon, we went to Kettle Hole to see what new things opened up to us after a week spent learning at Eagle Camp.

After webbing, we started to tkae out animals (to represent extinction) and saw how well, or not well, the web held up.

To fully understand the importance of each and every animals we saw and learned about from the herbivores to the carnivores, we made a food web where each of us represented a plant or animal.

And the Eagles were waiting to see us! Here the two young eagles were seen waiting for their parents to deliver them lunch. As noted by their brown heads, these eagles have yet to fledge. As the mature, their heads turn from brown to the characteristic white of a bald eagle.

Eli and Ian along with some other Eagle Adventurers canoed through Little Millers Bay to see the Blad Eagles.

By the last day, our song was finished and ready to sing to the tune of "The 12 Dys of Christmas".

Our monarch ceterpillars!

And insects we did find! Some Eagle Campers even caught a few monarch caterpillars.

We started our last day at eagle camp on the ground of Lakeside netting insects!

We ended the day with a very exciting trip. Though it may look like we've fallen asleep in class, we're actually very focused! We closed our eyes and went on an eagle journey to wherever our imaginations would let us fly, doing our best to see what an eagle might see.

With buckets in hand we collected leopard frogs, dragonfly larva, backswimmers, and a lot of mosquitoes.

It wouldn't be a Lakeside Labs nature camp without a visit to a wetland! The Eagle Campers brave the cattail frontier to see what they could find.

Like any good researcher, Jayce tests his scientific tools before using them in the field.

Anna reads up before venturing into Fort Defiance woods.

Ludo and Beatrice were amazed that this was still Northwest Iowa!

And into the woods we went! We drove about 25 miles east to Fort Defiance State Park to see what the glaciers had done. Formed by a "glacial burp" fort defiance is a forested ravine with a brook at its bottom. Uncharacteristic for this part of the state, we learned why and how the glacier could simultaneously form the priaire landscape at Kettle Hole and this uniqe wooded area at Fort Defiance.

Day Four started with some preparation for venturing into the woods...

Ashley, Camden, Ryan, and Anna "study" the wonders of West Lake Okoboji

All that adventuring worked up quite a sweat. Ludo, Cale, and the rest of the Eagle Campers went for a dig at Terrace Park in the late afternoon.

The holes were not, however, uninhabited. Leopard frogs joined us in our fun fen frolick

We came to holes of bright colors and unknown depth. The were scattered numerously across the terraced spongey ground.

Once we went through a mud pit, we decided to take off our blindfolds and take in the beautiful Silver Lake Fen.

After Cayler, we were blindfodled and led on a hike through a unique Iowa landscape with the charge of discovering where we were using all our senses except vision.

Our resident scientists explored the grounds of Cayler using binoculars to identify birds.

We traveled to Cayler Priaire to test our new herbivore knowledge and see what we could find.

We learned that there are in fact many kinds of herbivores such as frugivores, folivores, xylophages, and more! After learning about all the different kinds of herbivores we went out to see if we could find evidence of them here in Okoboji!

After learning all about plants, Beatrice wove some sandals for herself!

Each day we added to our "What We Want to Know" list and "What We've Learned" list. We also wrote down some of those things in our homemade journals.

Day 2 of Eagle Camp Begins!

Each day a "What Is It?" activity was set up for us to do. Today it was a plant identification quiz with a prize for those who got the most correct answers.

Ajay told us all about the woodpecker, like how the female plucks its feather on its belly to keep its eggs warm

After placing the band around it's ankle, the birds were held to our ears to hear how fast it's heart was beating!

Ajay passes Fallon a Downy Woodpecker that we caught and banded.

The first day of eagle camp, we spent the morning banding birds. Here, Ajay holds a red-bellied wood pecker which already had a band when we caught it in the mist nets.

First Day of Eagle Camp

First Day of Eagle Camp: We had many questions about eagles. How big are they? HOw many eggs do they lay? What is the smallest thing they eat? How big is their nest? How can we find out?

We made journals out of recycled paper and sticks and began to record our questions and observations and things we are learning.

AJay Winter, a biologist from the Iowa DNR, visited our class. He writes a column for the Iowa DNR Outdoors Magazine. We learned how to catch and band birds with them, and about special adaptations birds have. For example, the redbellied woodpecker has a long, barbed tongue that it uses to pull insects out of the holes it drills into trees. The tongue curls up inside the top of its head and acts like a shock absorber when it pecks holes in the trees.

It was very hot and humid so we went swimming. We also cooled off by canoeing and we saw the eagle nest at Lakeside Lab and two adult and one juvenile eagle.

We began to learn a song about eagles.